THE

BARBIZON SCHOOL

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the nature of landscape

May 2 to July 21, 2008

MILDRED LANE KEMPER ART MUSEUM

A stately tree, its scalloped outline silhouetted against a cerulean sky, grows elegantly askew from a riverbank in Jules Dupré’s c. 1850 painting The River

(Fig. 1). Two diminutive figures dwarfed beneath the sheltering canopy of the tree put its grand scale into perspective. The lone tree is the painting’s humble sub-ject—not only does it take center stage within the composition and almost engulf the picture plane, but it is the only element of the painting that Dupré depicted with any degree of detail. This painting of a simple tree was typical of the modest landscapes of the Barbizon school, an informal group of artists, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Jules Dupré, François Louis Français, Charles Emile Jacque, Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon, and Théodore Rousseau, who lived and worked around the small farming vil-lage of Barbizon between 1830 and 1880. Perched on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, not far from Paris, the Barbizon area appealed to landscapists for its rich diversity of scenery, ranging from ancient forests to open countryside, and its reputation as a pristine setting untouched by the industrializing hand of modern man. This area seemed an ideal location for artists who sought to record rural life out of doors, or en plein air, through a supposedly unmediated relation-ship with nature.

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Fig. 1 (opposite)

Jules DupréFRENCH, 1811-1889

The Riverc. 1850 Oil on canvas

21 3/16 x 17 7/8 in.

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The retreat to a preindustrialized, unspoiled state of nature appealed not only to the painters of the Barbizon school, but was also immensely popular among the urban bourgeoisie who bought their paintings. Artists and patrons alike turned to nature—engag-ing it directly or through images—as an antidote to the ills of modern indus-trialization. By the early nineteenth century, the city of Paris was in the midst of transforming into a modern metropolis that seemed increasingly far removed from traditional and rural ways of life. The modernization of Paris, including industrialization and Haussmannization,1 resulted in what many perceived as a dirty, crowded, and artificial environment—the opposite of natura naturans, or “natural nature,” a medieval ideal revived dur-ing this period by, among others, the art critic Théophile Thoré, a good friend and supporter of many of the Barbizon painters.

ways….”2 Thoré’s clear distinction between an “eternally fecund” nature and the artificiality that defines modern life, however, in reality was never so clearly delineated, and the “pristine” quality of the Barbizon area was largely fictionalized, initially by entrepre-neurial locals in an effort to stimulate economic development through tour-ism. For a nineteenth-century audience desperate for an escape from urban life, the rural scenes painted by the art-ists of the Barbizon school seemed to promise a much-desired glimpse of the elusive natura naturans.

Such escapist desires created a brisk market not only for landscape paint-ings and prints, but for all things nature-related, which seemed to offer a temporary respite from modern life. Gardens, parks, and diorama shows were accessible without leaving the city, while a burgeoning tourist industry catering to those audiences with the means to leave the metropolis boosted the quantity and variety of travel guides, inns, and country houses avail-able in all price ranges. Souvenirs such as the genévrine, a carved bit of juniper, allowed tourists to bring the scent of the forest to their homes in the city. The travel industry became just one of many industries exploiting nature for commercial development; although its means were very different from those of the forest clearing and rock quarry-ing operations that seemed to pop up everywhere as the city’s demand for natural resources grew, the end goal—profit—was nevertheless the same. As landscapists as well as participants in the travel industry, the Barbizon artists were both entrenched in and conflicted about this commodification and com-mercialization of nature. This essay will examine the ambiguous relationship

Artists And pAtrons Alike turned to nAture—

engAging it directly or through imAges—

As An Antidote to the ills of modern industriAlizAtion.

In a review of the Salon of 1847, Thoré praised a painting by Diaz de la Peña, stating, “We all have quite enough worries in our political and pri-vate lives to forgive the arts for remind-ing us of natural nature, natura naturans as the ancients called it, that nature eternally fecund and luxuriant which contrasts so cruelly with our artificial

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between the Barbizon artists’ genuine desire to produce naturalistic, plein-air depictions of rural life and their role in the commodification and commercial-ization of nature through the perpetua-tion of the myth of natura naturans.

Although the members of the Barbizon school shared no set

doctrine or credo, and their styles varied significantly, they were united in their common desire to experience nature directly and to present it indi-vidualistically and poetically, employing painterly techniques that emphasized the subjectivity of the artist through effects of light and atmosphere.3 The complex interplay of lights and darks against the intensity of the azure sky in Diaz de la Peña’s Wood Interior (1867)

(Fig. 2) offers a vibrant example of such poetic light explorations. Similar effects could imbue a painting with a strong emotional quality, as in Jacque’s Landscape with Sheep (n.d.) (Fig. 3), where the clouded gray sky and heavy shad-ows create a sense of melancholy or loss that seems to reflect the emotional state of the pensive shepherdess seated amidst her sheep.

Through their poetic depictions of nature, the Barbizon painters rejected the traditional artistic conventions of Academic landscape painting, such as the pastoral and the heroic, and strived instead to depict a less idealized, more personal version of a humble nature.4 Dupré’s The River (Fig. 1) exemplifies this strategy. Pink and mauve patches

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hinting at a sunrise peek out from between the horizon and the lower branches of the tree, but Dupré’s stra-tegic placement of the tree intentionally blocks the most stunning effects of the sunrise. Instead, the hints of color play a supporting role for the tree, which tra-ditionally was too mundane a subject to merit being anything but a study: choos-ing a commonplace tree over spectacu-lar sunrise was a conscious departure from such Academic conventions. For Barbizon artists, the role of the painting was not to inspire awe for the breath-taking beauty of nature, as prescribed by the theory of “the contemplative sublime,” but to engage the viewer in the quotidian serenity of nature.5

Though the artists of the Barbizon school professed to look only to nature as source and inspiration, stylistic influ-ences from several artistic sources are still evident in their work, including the French Rococo, seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes and genre scenes, and the more recent landscapes of English

painters such as J. M. W. Turner and John Constable (both featured prominently in the 1824 Exposition Universelle).6 Dupré’s The River shows a strong influence of the French Rococo, particularly in the frilly edges of the tree and the chiaroscuro effects of its dark leaves silhouetted against the bright sky. Dupré—along with many other Barbizon artists, including Diaz de la Peña and Constant Troyon—began his career as a porcelain painter, where typical landscape scenes remained rooted in a conservative tradition. As keenly aware as they were of the styles of landscapes that were in popular demand at the time, they—wittingly or not—likely drew on this knowledge while painting their own landscapes. At the same time, by embracing local and northern sources stylistically and as sub-ject matter, the artists of the Barbizon school largely rejected the classicizing tendencies of the Academic landscape genre, in which the Italian countryside figured prominently and local scenery was virtually ignored.7 Instead, the anti-

Fig. 2 (opposite)

Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la PeñaFRENCH, 1808-1876

Wood Interior1867 Oil on canvas

43 1/4 x 51 1/2 in.

Fig. 3 (below)

Charles Emile JacqueFRENCH, 1813-1894

Landscape with Sheepn.d. Oil on canvas

29 1/8 x 39 5/8 in.

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classical Barbizon artists focused almost exclusively on local French scenery.8

Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Barbizon practice—important to the artists as well as to their patrons—was working en plein air. Not only did it provide an opportunity to observe light effects directly, but it appeared to promise an unmediated engagement with nature that would ensure the artistic independence of their vision. To viewers also, a painting executed en plein air—without the semblance of studio mediation—would have seemed to bring them one step closer to nature. By the 1820s, plein-air studies had become de rigueur practice for land-scapists, largely through the advocacy of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. An early and extremely influential devotee of plein-air painting, Valenciennes published a textbook in 1800, Elémens de perspective pratique, à l’usage des artistes, in which he insisted that all landscape painters must paint outdoors, making quick studies that could be used in the

studio to create large, highly finished Salon paintings. The artists of the Barbizon school, like most of their peers, followed his advice: they painted studies and sketches outdoors, then typ-ically returned to their studios to create final compositions using their studies. Their finished paintings, however, often retained the unfinished appearance of their studies—as in Corot’s Le chemin des Vieux, Luzancy, Seine-et-Marne (1871-72) (Fig. 4) and Harpignies’s Landscape: Briare (1888) (Fig. 5), with their large patches of color and visible brush-strokes—creating the impression that their compositions were created fully en plein air. Although this lack of finish was one of their critics’ largest sources of irritation, it served the artist and the patron by appearing to underscore the paintings’ direct connection to nature.

Their audience’s perception of the paintings of the Barbizon school as highly naturalistic—faithful, precise depictions of nature—was rooted in their understanding of the paintings as

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Fig. 4 (opposite)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille CorotFRENCH, 1796-1875

Le Chemin des Vieux, Luzancy, Seine-et-Marne (The Path of the Old People)1871-72 Oil on canvas, 12 7/8 x

22 in.

Fig. 5 (above)

Henri HarpigniesFRENCH, 1819-1916

Landscape: Briare1888 Oil on canvas, 15 x 24 in.

empirically observed, accurate render-ings of nature, a presumption based more on their belief in the paintings’ direct connection to nature than on the aesthetic qualities of the paintings themselves, which in fact were often extremely painterly and full of poetic license. Despite this contradiction, the impression of an empirically based naturalism in their paintings led critic Albert de la Fizelière to proclaim in 1853 that “Barbizon has given birth to a new science of painting.”9 Rather than a scientific manifestation, however, the Barbizon school’s own brand of naturalism was an atmospheric natural-ism depicting nature viewed through the subjective lens of the artist, a lens that edited and manipulated, elimi-nating evidence of modernization or intensifying effects of color, in order to heighten the poetic or emotional effect of the scene. Rousseau, known then as the most naturalistic of the Barbizon painters, often imposed a strict geomet-ric organization to his compositions, as in his Landscape (n.d.) (Fig. 6), where horizontal layers of color divide the

canvas into thirds around a central copse of trees structuring the oval composition. Such carefully arranged, highly organized compositions were common in paintings of the Barbizon school, although they are a far cry from the loosely composed, organic compositions one might expect from a strictly scientific naturalism, with its purely mimetic representation of nature. The air of informality—which balances the artificial geometry of the scene and enhances the sense of natu-ralism—stems from the apparent spon-taneity and arbitrariness of the subject matter: the asymmetrical framing of the trees and the casual pose of the man, paused and looking directly at the viewer, produce the impression that the artist just stumbled across a scene whose edges were already defined.

The artists of the Barbizon school negotiated a fusion of objective naturalism and artistic subjectivity that responded to one of the most impor-tant debates about art in the early and mid-nineteenth century: whether the

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role of the artist was primarily mimetic or creative.10 Of all the genres, pure landscape, with no narrative and no religious, literary, or allegorical refer-ences, had perhaps the most at stake in this debate; the lack of a lofty moraliz-ing or didactic function, which so many other genres of painting served, left its inherent value unclear. Some critics held that an outright copy of nature was purely imitative and thus—in a sense—competing with nature, but to invent a beautiful painting out of nature was to fulfill the true role of the artist. Others believed that an artist could not improve on nature, so he should not deviate from its example. By adding a layer of poetic emotion to their naturalistic depictions of nature, the Barbizon artists offered neither a base copy nor an improvement upon nature, but instead a personal version of nature that occupied a neutral middle ground in this debate. Diaz de la Peña’s Wood Interior (Fig. 2), for instance, appears to be a meticulously observed depiction of the forest depths. But—together with his dynamic brush-work—the intense, almost black, shad-ows juxtaposed dramatically against

the brightness at the heart of the painting imbue the scene with a mood that is vibrant and lively, if somewhat ominous and mysterious. This poetic quality, manifest in the work of Diaz de la Peña and other Barbizon artists, originates not with a dry transcription of nature, but from the artist’s patently subjective lens, one that contributed to nostalgic conceptions of the area that were not, overall, reflective of reality.

As such, the “naturalism” and appar-ently direct representation of nature that nineteenth-century audiences found in the paintings of the Barbizon school served to perpetuate the myth that these paintings were true and accurate depictions of a natura naturans that existed not only in the literal past, but in a past that continued to endure just beyond the city gates of Paris. This was a fantasy fed not only by the artists working around Fontainebleau, but also by the myriad guidebooks and travel literature about the area marketed to tourists—as well as art-ists—throughout France, Europe, and America. The numbers of artists visit-ing the area grew exponentially from

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Fig. 6 (opposite)

Théodore RousseauFRENCH, 1812-1867

Landscapen.d.Oil on canvas on board

8 1/2 x 14 1/16 in.

the 1820s on. By the 1860s, nearly seven hundred artists from all over Europe had flocked to the area to wit-ness its rich, pristine, and diverse land-scapes firsthand.11 The proliferation of artists—and their fame—became proof of the quality of the scenery, and the artists themselves became another area attraction. Artists were perceived as cultural authorities on nature, cred-ited with a rare ability to recognize beauty where the lay person saw only a tree or a rock, and the guidebooks took advantage of this authority when-ever possible.

Signs of the growing commercializa-tion in the area—including not only tourism, logging, planting of nonnative trees, and quarrying, but also the new road constructions, the erection of colorful arrows, signs, and structures, and even other artists—are rare in the paintings of the Barbizon school.12 The ubiquity of these activities in this area, however, makes all the more apparent the artists’ intentional editing of their compositions. More frequently depicted were the less commonly witnessed

activities of the area’s farmers, herding sheep and cows or stacking hay— as in Troyon’s Landscape with Cattle (n.d.) (Fig. 7) and Jacque’s Landscape with Sheep (Fig. 3)—scenes that fit popular notions of rural life, past and present, where man lived in harmoni-ous balance with nature.

The numerous travel guides and other publications perpetuated the same image of an enduring state of natural equilibrium. An early article extolling this image in an 1839 issue of L’Artiste described the forest in Fontainebleau as “the only one in France where one can see some vestiges of the virgin forest, traversed in addition by conve-nient and picturesque roads.”13 The author did not present the roads as an intrusion into what would otherwise be “virgin forest,” but rather appreci-ated their convenience. In his 1855 guide, C. F. Denecourt, the leading force behind the region’s development as a tourist site, steeped the image of virgin forest with an air of timeless otherworldliness, inviting visitors to

“come to explore our romantic wilder-nesses, our primitive rocks, our ancient groves, our sacred oaks.”14 This is the Fontainebleau that Diaz de la Peña presents in Wood Interior (Fig. 2): a dark, vital, mysterious tapestry of leaves and limbs framing a clearing in the thicket, bathed in sunlight. With heavy brush-strokes, the branches and foliage of all the trees are laced together to create one whole, organic entity. Dark, almost black, surfaces in the painting emulate the impenetrable shadowy depths of the forest—depths that seem too dense to allow a visitor entrance.

Utterly devoid of any sign of man, Wood Interior offers a vision of natura naturans in its purest state. In fact, by

some critics held thAt An outright copy of nAture wAs

purely imitAtive And thus— in A sense—competing

with nAture, but to invent A beAutiful pAinting

out of nAture wAs to fulfill the true role

of the Artist.

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1867, Diaz de la Peña would have been hard-pressed to find such a pristine location. The author Philippe Burty, writing only five years later, com-plained about the inescapable presence of man in the forest: “Man can be felt everywhere. Large red and blue arrows shoot forth from the intersections of all the trails, as if a forest wasn’t made for getting lost in!”15 Yet the area’s reputation for being pristine and pure was only partly true even by 1820, when entrepreneurial locals began to trade on the renown of the untainted site in order to attract tourists. Logging in the forest was in full swing by that time, and rock quarrying had become one of the region’s main commercial activities. Indeed, many of the area’s early visitors, including not only art-ists but also authors, were impressed with the untamed, undomesticated quality of the area, but by the end of the nineteenth century, Fontainebleau forest had become a veritable amuse-ment park of natural sites, packaged and marketed for tourists to experience natura naturans. The proximity to Paris—

only an hour by train, once service began in 1849—made it easily acces-sible, and the numbers of casual visitors grew steadily.16 The savvy entrepre-neurs leading this campaign, Denecourt foremost among them, authored travel guides that manufactured myths and histories transforming the forest into a richly romantic site. Denecourt further whimsically bestowed trees and rocks with names suggestive of great importance, constructed fake landmarks, erected placards identify-ing imagined events, and cleared paths, marking them using the aforemen-tioned large, colorful arrows painted on trees throughout the forest.17 Even as early as the 1850s, many of those who had experienced the forest in previous decades were dismayed at its change. Novelist George Sand, who had first visited Fontainebleau in the 1830s, wrote in 1856, “The surroundings have become a bit too like a pleasure garden. There are too many names and emblems on the rocks. There are too many of them everywhere.”18

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a pleading proposal to protect four key areas not only from devastation by logging and the planting of pines, but also from the “maniacal old man named Mr. Denecourt” and his recent activities, namely “to lay out useless trails, to build ridiculous platforms, to make walls of grass, to cover with paint, numbers, and inscriptions the forest’s most beautiful trees, which he is despoiling and dishonoring.”19 Rousseau’s petition succeeded eventu-ally: in 1861, imperial decree set aside several tracts of forest as the world’s first nature preserve. These conserva-tion efforts were aimed specifically at halting the commercialization of the forest, and at protecting the nostalgic

vision of Fontainebleau as France’s last “vestiges of virgin forest.”

Rousseau’s fight against the commer-cialization of the forest contrasts starkly with the attitude of his colleague Jacque, a specialist in paintings of sheep. Jacque moved permanently to Barbizon, along with Millet, in 1849, when a cholera outbreak in Paris led many inhabitants to retreat to the countryside. In many ways, Jacque was more entrepreneur than escapist. He dabbled in real estate develop-ment in the area and worked to attract numerous artists, who then bolstered his investment in the town’s real estate market. His efforts at farming ranged more towards exoticism than produc-tivity: he began a plantation of aspara-gus—a specialty crop at the time—on the edge of the forest and established a boutique chicken farm that featured exotic breeds. At Barbizon, Jacque sought not the simple rural life of a peasant, but a sophisticated, urbane, and romanticized version of rustic country life.

Not surprisingly, Jacque’s paint-ings were some of the most overtly romantic of the Barbizon school. The painterly Landscape with Sheep (Fig. 3) is a key example, and typical of his favorite trope: a flock of sheep grazing in a rocky field, with a heavy sense of melancholy permeating the scene. His constant reiteration of this image should not be mistaken for an indica-tion of the frequency of this sight, for grazing in open pasture had ended in the area almost completely by the 1860s.20 Constant Troyon’s own focus on similarly nostalgic bovine scenes won him the distinction of being the most commercially successful member of the Barbizon school. For Troyon’s

the AreA’s reputAtion for being pristine And pure wAs only

pArtly true even by 1820, when entrepreneuriAl locAls begAn

to trAde on the renown of the untAinted site in order to

AttrAct tourists.

Fig. 7 (opposite)

Constant TroyonFRENCH, 1810-1865

Landscape with Cattlen.d. Oil on canvas, 13 x 18 1/2 in.

Faced with the commercialization of the area and the growing com-modification of nature, the artists of the Barbizon school responded in diverse ways. Rousseau, alarmed at the prospect of the forest’s ruin, ral-lied other artists, including Dupré, Diaz de la Peña, and later Millet, and spearheaded efforts to create a nature preserve in the forest. They had already twice, in 1837 and 1849, prevented clear-cutting in areas they considered especially significant, and in 1852 Rousseau sent the emperor

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popularity and for the repetition in his oeuvre, poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire, in his review of the 1859 Salon, accused the artist of pandering to a mass market.21 Dwelling on this outmoded imagery, Jacque and Troyon offered it to their urban audiences as a glimpse of the natura naturans they so desperately sought.

The fantasy of natura naturans seduced the Barbizon artists as much as their audiences. Whether producing con-sciously nostalgic imagery or editing out evidence of modernity, the artists of the Barbizon school created scenes that answered the public’s yearning for a pure nature that would endure after modernization, while satisfying

their own urges to connect with nature and rustic ways of life. Their motiva-tion for meeting these desires stemmed from many sources, as disparate as the artists themselves: a reflex to preserve a disappearing world, an escape from the realities of modernization, an opportunistic response to mounting commercial demand, a personal desire to commune with nature, a gesture towards independence from established artistic conventions. These motivations were full of contradictions and impos-sibilities: the more the artists invested themselves in scenes of natura naturans, the more they perpetuated the elusive myth that was commodifying and com-mercializing nature, further removing it from this ideal.

1 Prefect of Paris from 1853–1870, Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, largely under the direction of Napoleon III, orchestrated the dramatic transformation of the city of Paris through mass demolitions to accom-modate street redesigns, suburban annexation, and new train and sewer services. The character of Paris changed from a medieval town with narrow winding streets, no clear organizational system, and few modern amenities, to a consciously planned modern metropo-lis, with wide, deliberate, and efficient roads, new buildings, formal public parks, and a highly developed infrastructure.

2 Théophile Thoré, “Le Salon de 1844 précédé d’une letter à Théodore Rousseau,” reprinted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood with Jason Gaiger, Art in Theory, 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 223.

3 These characteristics later became basic tenets of Impressionism. Many scholars have valued the Barbizon school primarily as being the precursor to Impressionism; more recent scholars question this linear model of development. In any case, it is clear that the artists of the Barbizon school were extremely influential to the Impressionists, and many were invited to exhibit with them at their first exhibition. See Steven

Adams, The Barbizon School and the Origins of Impressionism (London: Phaidon, 1994), and Helga Aurisch, “The Impressionists at Fontainebleau,” in Kimberly Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 168–83.

4 The work of Claude Lorrain typifies the pastoral landscape, a classical, Arcadian scene; exemplary of the idealized, glorified heroic landscape is the work of Nicolas Poussin. These two categories dominated Academic landscape painting from the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries.

5 “The contemplative sublime” in art, proposed by Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck in her Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity as Manifested in Nature, Art, and Human Character (1815), was a middle ground between the horror of the sublime and the wonders of the beautiful. For more on this, see Edward S. Casey, “Apocalyptic and Contemplative Sublimity” and

“Pursuing the Natural Sublime” in his Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 41–73.

6 In an 1863 letter, Jean-François Millet condemned

NOTES

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those who looked to art rather than to nature for inspi-ration, accusing them of being “buried in the contem-plation of the art of the past,” and claiming they “do not see that Nature is rich enough to supply all needs.” Reprinted in Harrison, Wood, and Gaiger, Art in Theory, 377.

7 Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was a major force in redirecting attention to the local countryside. Although he himself focused on Italian scenes, his influential text on landscape art, Elémens de perspective pratique, à l’usage des artistes (1800), included Fontainebleau in his list of French sites rich in material for landscapists. See Philip Conisbee, Sarah Faunce, and Jeremy Strick, In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1996).

8 Corot, who visited Italy on multiple occasions, was the most notable exception. The domestic landscapes would become a tool for the Second Empire govern-ment to promote nationalistic pride, exalting the French countryside in order to inspire a sense of unity and national identity that was as reliant on rural life and the various regions of France—uniquely individual yet quintessentially French—as on urban areas. After the Second Empire, the new Director of Fine Arts, Charles Blanc, administered the program more conservatively, seeking “decorative art that interests everyone.” See John House, “Authority Versus Independence: The Position of French Landscape in the 1870s,” in Framing France: The Representation of Landscape in France 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 16.

9 Albert de la Fizelière, quoted in Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau, 12.

10 For a detailed study of this discourse and the role of expression in modern art, see Richard Shiff,

“Expression: Natural, Personal, Pictorial,” in A Companion to Art Theory, ed. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 159–72.

11 See Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau, 24.

12 One exception was Jules Dupré’s logging scene, Felled Trees, from the 1840s. The future Impressionist painters, on the other hand, many of whom worked in

the area in the 1860s, more commonly included mod-ern scenes such as these in their work. Monet’s Forest of Fontainebleau (1864), for example, depicted a wagon pulling giant logs along a huge swath of cleared forest land. For more on the Impressionists at Fontainebleau, see Aurisch, “The Impressionists at Fontainebleau,” 150, and Adams, The Barbizon School. For more on the exceptional instances of Barbizon painters’ inclusion of modern subject matter, see Greg Thomas, Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 64.

13 A. S., “The Forest of Fontainebleau, Destructions,” quoted in Thomas, Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France, 165.

14 C. F. Denecourt, quoted in Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 176.

15 Philippe Burty, quoted in Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau, 19.

16 In 1857, over 135,000 tourists arrived via train alone. See Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau, 13.

17 Ibid., 17.

18 George Sand, quoted in ibid., 19.

19 Théodore Rousseau, quoted in Thomas, Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France, 174.

20 As farmers learned the value of controlling their flock’s food more carefully and making use of the precious manure left behind, they were less willing to let their flocks roam. See Thomas, Art and Ecology in Ninetheenth-Century France, 69. Grazing was in fact a minor part of the area’s economy by mid-century, and was strictly controlled by law in the forest and surrounding areas. For more about the politics of forest usage, see Jones, In the Forest of Fontainebleau, 98.

21 See John Sillevis and Hans Kraan, The Barbizon School (The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1985), 57.

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SElECTEd illuSTRaTEd CHECKliST OF THE ExHibiTiON

THE baRbizON SCHOOl aNd THE NaTuRE OF laNdSCapEAll artworks listed here are in the collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Jean Charles Cazin (French, 1841–1900) Path on the Cliffs, n.d. Oil on canvas 19 13/16 x 24 1/4 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875) Le Chemin des Vieux, Luzancy, Seine-et-Marne (The Path of the Old People), 1871–72 Oil on canvas 12 7/8 x 22 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 4, p. 6

Charles François Daubigny (French, 1817–1878) Landscape (On the Oise River), 1877 Oil on canvas 15 1/4 x 26 1/4 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905

Charles François Daubigny (French, 1817–1878) Lever de Lune (Sur Bords de l’Oise), 1875 Etching 8 9/16 x 12 3/4 in. Gift of Dr. Malvern B. Clopton, 1930

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Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (French, 1808–1876) Wood Interior, 1867 Oil on canvas 43 1/4 x 51 1/2 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 2, p. 4

Jules Dupré (French, 1811–1889) The River, c. 1850 Oil on canvas 21 3/16 x 17 7/8 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 1, p. 2

François Louis Français (French, 1814–1897) Landscape, 1886 Oil on canvas 17 x 25 13/16 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905

Henri Harpignies (French, 1819–1916) Landscape: Briare, 1888 Oil on canvas 15 x 24 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 5, p. 7

Charles Emile Jacque (French, 1813–1894) Landscape with Sheep, n.d. Oil on canvas 29 1/8 x 39 5/8 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 3, p. 5

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Charles Emile Jacque (French, 1813–1894) Paysage, Moulin (Butte Montmartre), 1848 Drypoint 12 9/16 x 9 5/8 in. University purchase, Art Acquisition Fund, 1996

Emile van Marcke de Lummen (French, 1827–1890) Cattle in Landscape, n.d. Oil on canvas 25 3/16 x 33 1/2 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875) Le Départ pour le Travail (Going to Work), 1863 Etching on vellum 15 1/2 x 12 5/8 in. University purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. John Peters MacCarthy, and with funds from Mrs. Horton Watkins, Halsey C. Ives, Mrs. Clara Leete, Jane G. Stein, Barry Fleischer, and J. Lionberger Davis, by exchange, 2003

Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812–1867) Landscape, n.d. Oil on canvas on board 8 1/2 x 14 1/16 in. Gift of J. Lionberger Davis, 1967 Fig. 6, p. 8

Constant Troyon (French, 1810–1865) Landscape with Cattle, n.d. Oil on canvas 13 x 18 1/2 in. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905 Fig. 7, p. 10

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This publication was produced in conjunction with the exhibition The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape, on view from May 2 to July 21, 2008. It was curated by Rachel Keith and organized by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape is part of the Kemper Art Museum’s Focus series, which explores a theme, an individual work, or a group of works drawn from the permanent collection. Funding was pro-vided by the Hortense Lewin Art Fund and the members of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

© 2008 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Published by

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Washington University in St. Louis One Brookings Drive St. Louis, Missouri 63130

Managing editor of Publications: Jane E. Neidhardt, St. Louis

Publications assistant:

Eileen G’Sell, St. Louis

graduate assistant:

Noelle Bradley, St. Louis

design:

Counterspace, Los Angeles Michael Worthington and Yasmin Khan, with Cassandra Chae

Printer:

Ultra-Color Corporation, St. Louis

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is grateful for the generosity of Sam and Marilyn Fox and the Saint Louis Art Museum, who lent the following artworks to the exhibition:

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875), The Dreamer, 1854. Cliché-verre, 5 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, funds given by the Anne L. Lehmann Charitable Trust.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910), Fodder, 1887. Watercolor on paper, 13 x 19 1/2 in. Private collection of Sam and Marilyn Fox.

Johan Barthold Jongkind (Dutch, 1819–1891), Landscape, c. 1870. Watercolor and chalk on paper, 8 3/8 x 13 3/8 in. Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil.

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875), The Diggers, c. 1855. Etching, 11 5/16 x 16 9/16 in. Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, bequest of Richard Brumbaugh.

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875), Sheep and Shepherd, n.d. Crayon on paper, 12 1/2 x 18 in. Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, bequest of Mr. Ellis Wainwright.

Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812–1867), The Large Oak Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau, 1839. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 12 1/2 x 16 1/4 in. Collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, funds given by Mr. and Mrs. Christian B. Peper, Museum Shop Fund, and Eleanor J. Moore.

In addition, the Kemper Art Museum is grate-ful for the generosity of the following libraries for lending documentary materials to the exhibition:

University of Iowa Libraries

University of Texas Libraries

Washington University in St. Louis Libraries